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Bats in the basement: Reds' farm club owns worst record in Triple-A over last decade

As autograph hound Ted Petrey of Greensburg, Oh., looks over a player's signature, Boyd Knoerr, age 13, of the Highlands checks out Louisville Bats' Scott Schebler's bat which Schebler let him check out before the start of the game.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Louisville Bats manager Jody Davis explains the AAA team's signals to Cincinnati Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart before the start of the game. The injured Barnhart was playing for the Bats as part of his rehabilitation.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Cincinnati Reds catcher Tucker Barnhart talks with Louisville Bats starting pitcher Tejay Antone before the start of the game. The injured Barnhart was playing for the Bats as part of his rehabilitation.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Cincinnati Reds' Tucker Barnhart, playing with the Louisville Bats as he recovers from an injury, doubles on a line drive to Gwinett Stripes left fielder Travis Demeritte.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Cincinnati Reds' Tucker Barnhart, playing with the Louisville Bats as he recovers from an injury, reacts to his hit as he doubles on a line drive to Gwinett Stripes left fielder Travis Demeritte.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Cincinnati Reds' Tucker Barnhart, playing with the Louisville Bats as he recovers from an injury, scores on a Brian O'Grady line drive in the bottom of the 3rd inning, and is congratulated by players in the Louisville dugout.
25 July 2019 David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Louisville Bats' batboy Bradley Margulis, 17, who is going to be a senior at Ballard this year, stands his post in front of the team's hitting instruments.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

A line drive double to left field by Gwinnett Stripers' Kyle Wright in the top of the 5th inning forces Louisville Bats left fielder Nick Longhi to play it off the wall.
25 July 2019
David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal

Mired in their eighth straight sub-.500 season, stuck in last place for the third year in a row, the Cincinnati Reds’ top farm club owns a .456 winning percentage over the last 10 years – the worst among all Triple-A teams.

Like their winged mascot, these Bats are rarely rightside-up. Yet despite their prolonged futility and the financial limitations of their small-market parent club, Bats management remains both contractually and philosophically bound to the Reds and disinclined to seek a divorce when the current working agreement expires after the 2020 season.

“We have no plans to even talk about that,” Bats owner Stuart Katzoff said before Tuesday’s game at Louisville Slugger Field. “We love the Reds ... Wins will start coming.”

“Clearly our fans are frustrated and the record speaks for itself,” said Bats president Gary Ulmer. “However, we continue to feel our fans are best-served by being a Reds’ affiliate and that the Reds clearly would be the fan favorites in our market.”

Louisville Bats' batboy Bradley Margulis, 17, who is going to be a senior at Ballard this year, stands his post in front of the team's hitting instruments.
25 July 2019
(Photo: David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal)

Proximity has its place. The Reds value Louisville as one of the largest cities in their region, and as a convenient place to park prospects who might be needed on short notice 99 miles up the road at Great American Ball Park. But though many spectators view the home team as an entertainment alternative rather than an intense rooting interest, continued failure has a cumulative effect.

Between 2007 and 2018, Bats’ average home attendance dropped nearly 28%, from 9,210 to 6,658. Aggressive promotions and affordable pricing have helped stop that slippage this season, at least temporarily, but the product on the field remains problematic.

“We won three straight division titles (from 2008 to 2010),” said Bats vice president Greg Galiette. “We thought it was going to go on forever. But you start looking back at the Double-A and Single-A teams, and you could see there were starting to be some struggles down there.

“It’s like plumbing. You could see it coming down the pipe and it’s headed our way.”

Two years after their most recent playoff appearance, the 2012 Bats finished 51-93 with the lowest team batting average and highest earned-run average in the 14-team International League. Improvement since then has been only incremental.

Through Friday's games, the Bats’ 10-year record of 633-756 is 139 games worse than that of the New York Yankees’ top affiliate in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Pa. But while that gap might be rationalized as a reflection of the relative resources of the two parent clubs, it’s harder to explain why the Bats have lagged 125 games behind the Durham Bulls during the same span.

The Bulls are the Triple-A affiliate of the Tampa Bay Rays, whose major-league payroll is less than half that of the Reds. The Indianapolis Indians, top farm club of the low-budget Pittsburgh Pirates, have been 111 games better than the Bats during the last decade.

Some of this may be cyclical. Fifty-seven active major-league players have played for the Bats at some point in their careers, including 15 members of the Reds’ current 25-man roster. Despite their difficulties in Louisville, the Reds’ farm system ranks sixth best in baseball according to both ESPN’s Keith Law and Bleacher Report’s Joel Reuter. Chattanooga first baseman Ibandel Isabel leads the AA Southern League in home runs and runs batted in. Lookouts’ left-hander Scott Moss has 119 strikeouts in 96 innings.

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“Triple-A is different,” Reds general manager Dick Williams said. “For the most part, your lower-level teams are made up a lot of your own prospects that are in the process of being weeded out. Different major league teams approach their Triple-A roster differently.

“I think some of the teams are able to spend significantly more money, putting major-league-ready assets in Triple-A on minor-league contracts. That’s something we try to do, but honestly we aren’t able to commit as many resources as some of the bigger-market teams to having players in Triple-A kind of just in case.”

Three Bats’ pitchers with major-league experience – Anthony Bass, Odrisamer Despaigne and Ian Krol – joined the Reds' organization last winter on contracts containing escape clauses that enabled them to become free agents in mid-season. Bass, who signed with the Seattle Mariners on May 21, is still Louisville’s saves leader more than two months later.

“I was excited coming out of spring training with the team we had,” Galiette said. “The team we had on paper and starting the year, it was pretty solid. Unfortunately, I think we had about half of our pitching staff opt out of their contracts ...

“That’s part of Triple-A baseball. Unfortunately, it all happened at the same time and kind of took the wind out of our sails.”

Further depleted by injuries and major-league promotions, the Bats have patched holes with spare parts and unrefined prospects, their lack of depth exacerbated by a conspicuous lack of continuity. Through the first 102 games of their season, the Bats made 137 player transactions.

Cincinnati Reds' Tucker Barnhart, playing with the Louisville Bats as he recovers from an injury, doubles on a line drive to Gwinett Stripes left fielder Travis Demeritte.
25 July 2019
(Photo: David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal)

“I told them I ought to make a T-shirt: ‘Who’s on my team today?’ ” manager Jody Davis joked. “I come into the clubhouse and I start calculating who moved and who I’ve got.”

Minor-league managers are accustomed to roster flux and understand their top priority is to move players through the system. They recognize development matters more than the score of individual games. Thus Davis will sometimes pass up the percentage play in favor of a teachable moment or play someone out of position to prepare him for a potential need in Cincinnati.

“Sometimes I’m trying to do things that I know that they’ll be asked to do in the major leagues,” he said. “It might not be for the best purpose here, but I know if you’re hitting fourth (for Louisville), when you get to Cincinnati you’re probably going to be hitting seventh or eighth. So you might be asked to bunt. Or you might be asked to hit and run ...

“Winning the games here would be great, but I think it’s more important for us to look at the big picture.”

The Reds are no different than other clubs in this regard. Pitch counts are carefully monitored and scrupulously restricted. While a big-league reliever might pitch as many as three days in a row, Bats pitchers are automatically off-limits the day after they throw more than 25 pitches.

“It’s hard for me some nights,” Davis said, “because I have to bring a pitcher in in the seventh inning (and) it might not be the best pitcher that I have to bring in in that situation. But this guy hasn’t pitched in three days, and so he has to pitch tonight. . .

“I can win this game if I bring so-and-so in, but it’s this (other) guy’s day to pitch. . .It’s a completely different game.”

So long as they continue to keep score, though, results will resonate. People will notice when there are Bats in the basement.

The stands in a section of the 1st base line bleachers have empty seats.
25 July 2019
(Photo: David R. Lutman/Special to the Courier Journal)

“We would like to see that team win,” Williams said. “We go into the year trying to put the most competitive roster at every level that we can and it’s been frustrating that we haven’t had more success at that highest level ...

“We’re a regional team. We’re in a market where there aren’t a lot of big-league cities right nearby. It’s important for us to be popular, to be the team that fans identify with, especially in markets like Louisville. We’ll continue to try to earn their excitement and their support.”